It's Easier to Say "Stop" Than "Go Ahead"

Question: If you have a gigantic oil slick sitting in the Gulf of Mexico, is it better to:

a) Skim it off the water, remove almost all the oil, and return the much cleaner water to the Gulf, or,

b) Leave the oil slick there because the water you'd be returning is not quite 100% pure?

If you are a normal human being, you answer a) because even the average moron knows that "pretty clean" is better than "disgustingly filthy."

The problem is, they don't have average morons working at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission, by the way, is "...to protect human health and the environment." The EPA employs a special class of morons. So, two months after the Gulf oil spill,

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

So the filthy oil sits in the Gulf, and the EPA's special class of morons congratulate each other on having prevented a catastrophic violation of agency regulations.

Here's another question: If the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't protect the environment, if, in fact, it actually gets in the way of protecting the environment, then why are we paying for it?